Myra Thomas
Thanks, everyone. Hi, I’m Myra Thomas and welcome to the weekly wrap from Bank Automation News, where we chart the future of banking technology and automation.

We welcome you to this weekly wrap for what’s happening in banking automation on June 11 2021. Before beginning I’d like to thank our advertisers for the week MX, Zeta Tech and CI&T for their support. I’m pleased to be joined today by our associate editors Loraine Lawson, and Jaspreet Kalra of the Bank Automation News team.

Hello to you both. First, before we get a little into the news. At bank automation news, I’d like to talk a little bit about what’s happening in general tech news. And certainly there’s been a lot of activity on the federal government and regulatory front, specifically related to Biden’s plan to reduce shortages of products critical to national security, whether they be you know, semiconductors or things needed for supply chain or medical related items. So the sweeping plan is looking to secure conduits for supplies from medicine to semiconductor chips. Also, there’s additional activity on the international front today because she said, oh seven leaders are meeting in the UK. And there’s been a specific announcement between US and UK leaders, noting that there will be a step up in efforts to fight cyber crimes throughout the world. And it sounds as if the move is much more focused on an offensive move versus maybe a more defensive one that’s been taken in the past. So that’s quite a significant announcement. In addition, I believe that things are sort of easing up on the pandemic front to some respects, in some respects, seems as if leaders are getting more comfortable with making statements about, you know, travel between the US and UK, for instance, as well as a major announcement from g7 leaders to put money behind close to a billion dollars for additional vaccine efforts.

We’re looking forward this week to also finding out more information on the task force that the US is creating, to study,

to opening Task Force up that allows for studying government data for IE, AI research, forgive me, just for one of our reporters and associate editors wrote a story about that. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that taskforce.

Jaspreet Kalra
For me. So this was voted yesterday. And what sort of struck out the most is the government is taking an active interest in helping AI researchers do their work. And the way they’re going to go about it is a by providing the data that the government collects on beat things like driving habits, health, indicators, even census data. And they’re going to share this data with AI researchers. And not only are they going to share this data, but they’re also going to help them find computing resources to be able to analyze this data. Now on the one hand, it’s about getting that competitive edge going again, but also, there’s this entire angle about competing with countries like China and Russia that are also investing in this sort of AI research. So this is the US government really stepping up to the plate when it comes to helping as AI researchers do their jobs. What do you think will be the implications for financial services firms and FinTech?

So that’s sort of unclear right now as to what sort of data will go into it. And the job of the task force is going to be to make policy recommendations on what sort of data can be shared with these researchers. Now, certainly there are people like Google clouds AI division head on the force, and Google Cloud is a provider to financial institutions as well. But that remains to be seen as to like what the exact trickle effects will be. And I guess that will also get clearer once the consequences I suppose files reports in May and November in played were super, I believe you also reported on a massive deal with software giant Citrix and partnership with findling. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that. Sorry. So Citrix, which is like a major fortune 100 software provider and creates software solutions for remote workspaces, and sort of remote machines that can be used in software environments. They are tappings, failing to shift over to a treasury management API. And what this allows this company to do that has a presence across the globe, about 100 million users worldwide, is access their bank accounts in real time and be able to manage their cash in real time instead of having to send say, a text file, request or log into a bank account each single time and check out how much money they have left. And in my conversation with the assistant treasurer at Citrix. Bruce Edlund. One of the things he mentioned specifically is that because cash management can be so complicated, given that they can be vendor payments to be made, they can be payrolls to be managed. getting that right

real time information really helps companies manage their cash better. And especially in a liquidity environment, which is really near negative interest rates in the us right now, getting a comprehensive idea of what your cash holdings are can really help you make the most of it. So I guess one major advantage Citrix is certainly seeing there is reducing the task time the treasury management team has to devote to logging into a bank account and seeing what balances they have that in real time. So more of their time can be devoted to what they couldn’t do with that cash.

Myra Thomas
Yeah, I think that when you were reporting, they said transitioning to an AI, API powered solution was, quote, a bit of a process.

Did they tuck it in? Can you talk a little bit more about what that meant?

Jaspreet Kalra
Certainly. So what they told me was that this, they started this process of transition in December last year, it’s likely to take till the fourth quarter of this year, so almost a year that goes into this transition. And some of that also depends on how ready the banks are to shift over to an API system. Because findling is more like an intermediary, they set up the API’s for the banks, they set up the API’s for the client, but then the bank also has to have its system ready to integrate those API’s. And Citrix made it sort of like a key point that this is going to be a differentiator, differentiating factor for them going into the future. Because if a bank doesn’t have that sort of robust API offering, they’re less likely to do business with them. And that sort of becomes notable because Citrix is a software firm themselves, so they probably understand what goes into making software accessible and usable in real time. Now, is this a trend that translates into other companies on a larger scale, that remains to be seen, that could be a trend where corporate treasurers start demanding API functionalities out of banks?

Loraine Lawson
So I believe that API’s are used for integration, and they ingest API’s, can you explain a little bit about how that works? Sure. So I mean, the way I was taught about it is that findling is going to construct that API for them, and then the bank is going to implement it on their end, and Citrix is going to implement it on there. And what

Jaspreet Kalra
I mean, the most simple way to understand is like a pipeline of information that is going to be set up for the two companies. And the process itself also involves getting all those tech specs aligned with each other. So it can’t be that Citrix tech specs do not, you know, sort of link up properly with one of their banks. And one of the things that Citrix also made there is that it’s a process because it also involves actively negotiating with the bank on how fast they can do something. And sometimes banks can also push back on this saying, Oh, no, the solution that currently exists, works perfectly fine. Why do you want to get a new thing? So that’s why I think the time component also becomes important. Okay,

Loraine Lawson
it’s gonna be interesting, because all these banks are using API’s. And when they when security expert I was talking to this week says hackers are increasingly targeting API’s for security hacks. So that could be something that would want to watch as, as the year continues?

Myra Thomas
Yeah, I think a couple of things we need to talk about. First off, I I neglected to talk about, I guess, the developments at the Senate and the hearing that came on Wednesday, regarding central bank, digital currencies, and generally the mood there and the information that was given out particularly on the politician and Senator Warren starting off

the comments related to sort of a

cryptocurrency and looking down on cryptocurrency and looking to a possible central bank, digital currency rollout in the US is sort of the solution that can fight off the bad guy of cryptocurrency and also solve the world’s problems as far as the underbanked. So, you know, all of that, obviously remains to be seen. But you know, there were certainly a number of experts from, you know, academia from MIT, as well as representatives from a center. Well, someone working with the center through the digital dollar Foundation, who spoke, who really wanted to make it clear that, you know, they were behind this effort and sponsoring independent efforts, research efforts to try to give information to the Federal Reserve to push them along, though, analysts I spoke to said, you know, would have met much more if some of these projects actually came from the Federal Reserve. So

Unknown Speaker
I think the other thing we need to mention this week, obviously, are things happening

Unknown Speaker
next week, as far as stories that we’re looking at that look promising anything on the horizon for you, just freight that seems very interesting.

Jaspreet Kalra
So one of the things I’ll be looking into is yet again, an ongoing topic, because federal regulators are getting curious about AI is how does one go about defining mathematical definitions of fairness and how do they align with legal definitions of fairness? And talking about cryptocurrencies for a second, the other idea that I’m looking into here is what good El Salvador’s decision to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender in the country mean for banks from a risk management perspective.

Myra Thomas
I’ll be looking at actually a story on AI enabled technology for cross border payments focusing more so on the growth there related to anti money laundering efforts. And AI has come up quite a bit, obviously, in our reporting, as far as whether it’s on the federal government front or new new technologies that are being developed. Lorraine, what is on the front for you next week? What stories?

Loraine Lawson
Yes, as you know, we’ve been looking at ethical AI a lot recently. And so I have a podcast with Stephen Jones, who’s with Queen’s University, he runs a professional certification there on ethical AI. Ethical AI is just the removal of bias for AI to make it more ethical, and then also be looking at commercial lending bought use cases. Super sounds wonderful. So we’ll look ahead to what’s happening here bank automation news, there’s a wonderful webinar coming up on Tuesday that you should take a part in to developing a sound strategy the future of automation technology for risk mitigation and security. We’ll have experts on our panel from industry and for banking will discuss how automation technology for risk mitigation and securities being day. Also, I just want to thank everyone for listening and watching. This has been the weekly wrap of bank automation news production thanks for your time, be sure to visit us at Bank automation news comm for further information on our news, as well as our upcoming webinars. You can follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn as well. Thanks very much